


Il Cielo in una Stanza

by cinnamoncommas



Category: La Passe-Miroir | The Mirror Visitor - Christelle Dabos
Genre: Comfort hopefully no hurt, Difficult pregnancy and everything associated with it, F/M, Family Fluff, Future Fic, I lied it's more than a sprinkle, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Not completely canon compliant, Post-Series AU, Sickfic, Spoilers up to and including Book4, Talk of infertility, Torn and Ophèlie get a happily ever after, Unplanned Pregnancy, a sprinkle of angst, but you know it gets worse before it gets better, this is self-indulgent af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27711155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamoncommas/pseuds/cinnamoncommas
Summary: God is gone, Thorn and Ophélie are back on the Pole and the Arks and their people are changing for the better.Finally, it's all good.Ophélie and Thorn are just fine as they are. They never wanted children, after all.Besides, they would be a disaster as parents.
Relationships: Ophélie/Thorn (La Passe-Miroir)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 84





	1. Imprevisto

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my delusions, Cinnamon speaking here.  
> This story was churning in my head for a while, but musing over it with a friend helped me to actually write it out.  
> I'm in the middle of Book 4 so there will be spoilers up to that ever changing point; naturally, bc of that, this story is not canon compliant and set in a happy flowery AU.
> 
> The Title is the homonym song written by Gino Paoli and originally sung by the one true empress of italian music, Mina. There is an English version called "The World we love in" but - honestly - it simply sounds better in Italian. 
> 
> The chapter title "Imprevisto" means "Hitch"
> 
> TW for first chapter is morning sickness

Ophélie has always been kinda sickly, but this is ridiculous. She was fine, just fine, yesterday. Or even five minutes ago, snuggling in her bed with her husband. She was _more_ than fine.  
So why is it that now her soul is leaving her body via vomit? Thorn, bless him, is crouching behind her and doing his best to keep her hair away from the jet of-

There, she is going to be sick again.

She makes a pitiful noise, partly because she feels like dying and partly because she is mortified and her eyes smart with tears.

“Deep breaths, dear.”

_Dear_

After everything they went through – and mind you, she would do it all again for him, every single thing – she feels silly at how giddy it makes her when he slips this sort of endearment when they are alone. How she loves this man is embarassing. She would have never believed it of herself. Nor him.

And that man she loves so much has a leg that can’t possibly be happy with the position they are in. She tells him so. He tells her to shut up. She doesn’t take it to heart, he is cross because he’s worried for her, she knows.

So she concentrates on breathing like he said - even if the smell is _not helping at all, Thorn_ – and she takes stock of herself as the nausea ebbs _too slowly_ away.  
For one, she is half-blind: in her mad, tripping dash to the toilet, she obviously forgot her glasses, she stubbed a toe or ten and hit her knees and an elbow _somewhere_. Her stomach feels tight.

Oh, yes, she has puke in her hair. 

“Thorn… I’m disgusting.” Her voice breaks and croaks and she feels _awful_ and her head hurts, possibly because she just lost her weight in liquid down the drain.

“A bit.” He says back. And, really, what was she expecting? She glares over her shoulder in his general direction, but it turns out moving her head was a bad idea. She clamps her eyes shut.  
Her head is pulsing something fierce now, but she doesn’t think she’ll be sick again. Thorn stands up with effort, but he has still more coordination than her. Not that difficult, but still.

Her husband helps her up and, after a fair amount of shuffling, they manage to sit side by side on the lid of the tub without breaking anything or themselves. She is proud. Her forehead makes a home in the cup of her hands and her hair does its thing. “I didn’t eat anything strange, I don’t understand...” she trails off, while her Thorn rubs a hand up and down her back in awkward comfort. “Perhaps you simply caught a bug” he says, nose twitching. “Can I leave you here on your own?”

Ophélie flushes in humiliation: how can he just… why is he treating her like a child? He knows, _he knows_ she’s had worse. “I’m fine.” She mumbles to her feet, with as much dignity as she can. He works around her, tidying things up, the worried toiletries helping him along and rallying each other back into order, responding to her misery, wanting to impress Thorn with their efficiency.

The faucet of the tub turns itself on so she can try to clean the worst of the stuff from her hair and, besides, a bath didn’t sound bad at all.  
The water still running, Thorn looms in front of her and she carefully twists back to him, half of her hair dripping wet and plastered to her head, the other half in its usual disaster. “Slowly.” He has a glass of water and she takes it gratefully, she finds herself suddenly parched and ew, her mouth tastes horrible.  
“I’ll be right back.” At that she gives him a look. Thorn has the gall to stare back at her.“Don’t fall into the tub, Ophélie.”

Well then, she might as well act like a child. She sticks her tongue out at him as an answer.

* * *

When he comes back, with his leg in the mechanical brace boasting of Gaela’s tinkering and stamp of approval, he finds her soaking in the tub and in the process of lathering her hair. Again. For good measure.  
Oh, no. Thorn is rubbing off on her.

She feels helpless and weightless at the look in his eyes, like she’s what he’d been looking for all his life. She is also naked and thus painfully embarassed, it matters not that they know each other inside and out.

He sits on the lip of the tub, folded over and turned to her, watching her like a hawk, to find signs of discomfort. He finds none, she feels much better. “May I?” She loves him for always asking before touching her. _They_ never asked on Babèl. Ophélie breathes.“ _Yes_.” 

Thorn’s hands take over washing her hair; those long, clever fingers that are usually so agile are now so very slow and careful and unsure over her scalp, trying to be tender. She likes Thorn’s hands, she often finds herself very invested in following the blue winding paths of his veins, with her own fingers or her lips gliding over his skin…  
Ophélie pushes her head further into Thorn’s hands, humming and purring like a cat. She could fall asleep like this, she thinks, after he’s done washing her hair and she’s sinking more than leaning into him. His clothes are wet but she hopes he doesn’t mind, he would not be leaving sweet lingering kisses on her shoulder if he _did_ , right?

“Ophélie…?”

“Mmmmh?” She is not particularly coherent, but she wants to say ‘yes’ to anything he may ask of her.

“You need to brush your teeth.”

… Ophélie is going to be a widow very soon because - so help her - her husband is going to drown.


	2. Malanimo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorn frets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Short chapter, Thorn is up.
> 
> Chapter title means "malevolence", more or less.
> 
> Obviously English is not my first language, so mistakes are bound to be present.

Ophelié was ill.

The thought was like a worm burrowing deeper and deeper, in circles, into his brain.

It was there, in the back of his mind, while he worked. Tried to work. _Pretended_.

His wife was ill.

And no amout of counting, tracing neat lines in his surroundings or achieving symmetrical mania in his office could help it.

His watch clicked open and clacked closed in short, agitated order. It was in a mood as well.

Because _his Ophelié is still ill_.

It was supposed to be a simple stomachache or a bug. It couldn’t be anything serious.  
It could not.

And yet, she kept being sick.

The watch clicked open.  
Ten days. Two hundred and forty hours. Fourteen thousand and four hundred minutes. Eight hundred and sixty four thousand seconds since the night she got sick out of nowhere. 

He had ruled out poison: she didn’t seem to be getting dramatically worse, there was no outward sign except pallor – he checked every inch of her skin for a prick, an injection mark- her pulse was all right, her pupils reacted normally and her bodily functions were regular. He got a slipper flung into his face for the trouble as thanks from his wife. Even the scarf slapped him twice. Softly.  
The watch clicked shut.

This- This _affliction_ had no rhyme nor reason to exist in his wife at this point or any other. This malady didn’t seem to follow a pattern, much like his wife.  
_They were supposed to be fine now that they were together_.  
The watch clicked open.

She downright frightened him three days prior when he found her slumped over, halfway into their bedroom. He started breathing again only after seeing her chest move. Seven long minutes later she came to him brushing trembling fingers through her unruly, impossible, beloved hair in their bed.  
The watch clicked shut.

He was fully prepered for an argument when he demanded she see a doctor. He was not about to back down. What he was not prepared for was his wife bursting into tears. His Ophelié was the bravest soul he knew, it hurt to see her sobbing that way. He was not a kind or delicate man, but he could have been gentler, perhaps: he knows his wife is weary of doctors and hospitals after- well, after.  
_That_ was his fault as well.

But she was unwell now and she needed a doctor, he tried to reason with her.

“I know! I’m sorry, I- I don’t even know why I’m crying...”

He was absolutely out of his element. If she did not know, how could _he_ know?

“… Hold me?” The jagged and pointy edges that made him who he is sharpened and softened, always and all for that small, impossible, maddening, lovely creature with glasses fogging and turning blue.

Really, how could he ever do anything but oblige? “I love you, Ophelié.”  
Hold her he could do, _then_.

But _currently_ he was counting down the seconds before he could leave and reach his wife to his aunt’s house. The appointment was today, _of all days_. The watch clicked open.

Thirty-six minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I tried with the numbers, ok?


	3. Vertigine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ophèlie goes to the doctor's office.  
> There is a meltdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> There are DIRECT SPOILERS for Book 4. 
> 
> Title meaning: Vertigo
> 
> TW: panic attack

Berenilde was looking at Ophèlie in plain reproach, she could feel it in the air - her claws, that is - vibrating in the air. Of course, Berenilde remains beatifical to anybody else, what with her smiling countenance and her impeccable posture. She looks as regal as any fairytale queen on a throne, except that she is seated in a physician’s waiting room.

An upscale one, but still.

Ophèlie can’t seem to stay still, hence the censure from her aunt in law. She would dearly like to be calm and collected instead of a nervous tingly mess of a woman, but she _can’t_. She would rather flee into a snowstorm at the moment. She feels small and scared and needy and she wants her husband _here_. 

She thinks she might end up clawing the doctor today, and would that not be just _splendid_? She so does not want to be here.

“My dear child! You’ll make yourself sick. Again.” With a start, courtesy of a well aimed mental pinch from Berenilde, the Animist refocused on her surroundings. Now the receptionist was also glaring at her. It might be because some of the chairs and a table were pawing at the ground with their legs, responding to the near panic that was oozing from her.  
Oh, no.  
She can’t be so careless, she doesn’t want to embarass Thorn. Berenilde certainly was ashamed of her at the moment, and working her way up to a fit of pique. Ophèlie gives a vague apology before sinking, sullenly, in her own seat and petting the armrests in a soothing way. Hopefully.

She must have looked pretty pathetic, for Berenilde’s eyes soften and she takes one of her hands in both of hers. She was a mother through and through, after all. “All will be well, child. I’ll be right here.”

Easy. Just like that.

Ophèlie sighs and nods at her. She doesn’t know what’s happening with her, but more than anything she wishes she didn’t have to ask a doctor. But not knowing eats at her, it always did. And she’s _frustrated_.

She idly wonders if Victoria is as fussy as her in such cases. She doubts it.

The receptionist sniffs and calls her over. It’s time for her appointment.

She looks to the doorway, hoping against reason that Thorn might be there, but she knows he can’t be, even before looking at the clock that ticks away on the wall.

She wishes Berenilde could come in with her.

* * *

Ophèlie had stopped listening to the physician after his outrageous conclusion; he sounds as if he’s speaking from underwater.

She always had irregular periods, courtesy of her mirror accident, she didn’t think… how many months had passed? Two? Three?

It just wasn’t possible for her to be pregnant. They told her on Bebél, she remembers - with clarity - the day she was dragged and examined by the Visionary doctor in the Memorial.

_You will never be able to have children_.

Her degree of inversion was too great.

_You will never be able to have children_.

She had no value on Babél except as a case study in the Deviation Observatory. She had to go there, because Sir Henry – _Thorn_ \- had to go there.

Where was Thorn? Did she lose him again?

She is breathing too fast-

Dimly, her breathing easing, she becomes aware of herself and her surroundings again. The panic is receding. The doctor – an Empathetic, she recalls - is frowning worriedly at her. He must have taken a step back, but he’s holding a hand out to her now. She doesn’t know how long he’s been standing like that.

“Madame? Can you hear me?” His voice sounds reassuring, too much: he’s using his family power, he must have used it to calm her down. How handy.

Ophèlie feels tired all of a sudden, she is not certain she can speak, so she nods at him. She needs to get a grip on herself.

“Very good, Madame Ophèlie. Can you take my hand? We’ll try to breathe together, mh?”

She doesn’t really want to touch him, but his hand seems the only thing steady in the room – oopsie, the furniture is trembling – and she needs to ground herself in some way.

“That’s right, Madame. In and Out. Easy Peasy.”

How does he manage not to sound condescending, she doesn’t know. It must be an Empathetic thing.

Once she feels fine, he helps her off the examination table and leads her to a seat in front of his desk; she can’t help but look longingly to the door.

“Would you like me to call Madame Berenilde?”

Ophèlie thinks she just might like this one doctor, after all.

* * *

When Berenilde sweeps past the doctor like she owns the place and her gaze falls on Ophèlie, drinking ant sized sips from a glass of water, her eyes tighten a little and her affable smile falters, but Ophelié thinks only she notices. Berenilde is a seasoned actress, after all, but Ophelié knows her.

Her aunt in law gracefully but quickly closes the distance between them and lowers herself in the other chair, spine straight. It’s in moments such as this that she can see the resemblance between aunt and nephew, when they brace themselves to unpleasantness. She takes Ophèlie’s hand.

“Well doctor, what is wrong with chére Ophèlie?” Berenilde sounds like she is daring him to say something _is_ wrong with her, her claws are sharp. Ophèlie has convinced herself she hallucinated the whole thing.  
_You will never be able to have children_.

She had told Thorn about it, after the whole mad ordeal on Babél. And, really, they were just fine on their own: she had never wanted any children, he hadn’t wanted them either. She knew that already. There was always a bitter and empty feeling, though, because it was not really their choice. It was not _her_ choice because it was taken from her. Besides, there was little Victoria to dote on and she was a darling.

“Well… not wrong _per se_ , Madame Berenilde. I believe your niece might be expecting.” Ophèlie tightened her grip on Berenilde’s hand. He’d said it again, she had not hallucinated it. “I’m not a specialist, but the perceptions I’m feeling from her-”

She couldn't take it any longer. “But _HOW_ ” 

There was a moment of deafening silence at her bewildered exclamation: the medic was blinking at her and Berenilde had turned in her seat to stare at her, unimpressed.

“Well, now, my dear, _dear_ child… I’m sure good doctor Xavier can explain how marital relations work, if you are _confused_.” She didn’t really give either of them time to recover from the embarrassment before she clapped her hands twice in childish glee, her beautiful red lips unfolding in a smile. “A baby! How wonderful! Are you _absolutely certain_ , doctor?” Berenilde looked like _she_ was the one pregnant.

Oh.

The Empathetic is staring at her, again, alarmed; who knows what feelings she was projecting at him, she might have felt sorry if she could have spared a shred of care for someone else. “ _I can’t have children!_ ” Ophèlie’s voice is too thin and too high and it breaks on that accursed word, but she would not stop, she could not give Berenilde or him any room to speak any longer.  
She blurts it all out: the Visionary, the inversion, the infertility. She is crying by the time she stops, and she feels ashamed even if it’s not her fault.

She wants to hide in her husband’s arms where no one else will see. “It must be something else, doctor.”

She can’t look at him and she can’t look at Berenilde either, can’t bear to see her face. Ophèlie knows she has nothing to be ashamed or devastated about, but she still _feels_ it. She never thought about the children she might have with Thorn: she didn’t want them when they first met, then she didn’t have a husband to make them with and, after Babél, there was _nothing_ but Thorn to think about at all.

She sees Berenilde’s lovely tattooed hands, tentatively unclenching and grasping both of hers. The silence is killing her.  
“Well, madame Ophèlie… I would like to take a blood sample, all the same. To be sure.”

A blood sample? A blood sample is objective, a blood sample is fine.

They’ll understand _then_ and so the doctor could find what was _really_ wrong with her. They’ll see that the nausea and the fatigue and the headache and the pains in her belly are not because of a baby, because there is _no_ baby.

She doesn’t know why that thought leaves her as empty now as it did in the Memorial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please now picture Ophèlie as the surprised Pikachu.
> 
> Thank you  
> \- Cinnamoncommas


	4. Cerchi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria is having a really confusing day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> "Cerchi" means "Circles"
> 
> I think there are no warnings to be had this time!

A green dollop of paint shakes in its slow fall as a thread from a tiny finger to the blank paper on the ground. Gravity, as it always does, runs its due course and it drops with a splash, severing the aforementioned connection, with tiny little green spots jumping away from the center.  
Victoria hums a little tune. She is kneeling on an old carpet in the comfy sitting room downstairs, so she won’t get anything dirty as she plays, Great-godmother said. Victoria might have gotten a little too mischievous ever since Father gifted her all the pretty colors.

She needs to be a bit more careful when Cousin Thorn comes to visit: if the house is too messy, the long arms of his shadow – _claws_ , Mother said – seize up and shiver. Victoria does not want to make Cousin Thorn uncomfortable in her house, because Cousin Thorn is uncomfortable mostly anywhere else. He’s not bad, even if he never smiles or laughs, Mother explained it all to her.

Besides, Godfather – Archie – smiles and laughs and sings enough for everyone else.

Victoria traces a green ring on the paper: she’ll add pretty flowers on it to make a crown. Godfather dropped one on her head once, after coming back from someplace with lots of plants.

“Popper buttons! We’ll make an artist out of you, mark my words, sweet girl.” Victoria giggles at Great-godmother’s tickling hands. Great-godmother is worried: she had spent the afternoon pacing from one shelf to the next, even if the books didn’t need to be fixed.

They were waiting for Mother to come home with Godmother, since Godmother was not feeling good and, unlike the books, she needed to be fixed.

* * *

Mother and Godmother had come home, but still no Cousin Thorn.

Mother had breezed into the room and smothered Victoria into a flurry of kisses, oohing and aahing at her pictures and demanding kisses of her own since “I have missed you so, my sweet!”

Godmother hardly says anything at all to anyone, just plops down on the bouncy soft sofa and stares straight in front of her. Her glasses are a strange yellow. Great-godmother’s face is pinched. “Bitten cents, what is it?!”

Mother tucks a lock of milky white hair behind Victoria’s ear and rolls her eyes before standing up and steering Great-godmother out of the room. “Your niece is being melodramatic, mon chere Rosaline! She’ll be right as rain as soon as she drinks some ginger tea.”

* * *

Her mother was wrong: Godmother – Victoria thinks – is still decidedly unwell.

She had only spoken to say _No_ to the spicy sneezy tea and an unthankful sounding _Thank you_ when Mother and Great-godmother bullied her into drinking it anyway.

Victoria doesn’t understand how Mother can be so happy when Godmother is not. Her mother is not mean.

The little girl tilts her head to the side to maybe see what Mother sees, to find something to be happy about. Godmother is staring down at her lap, her hands resting on her tummy. Victoria deliberates she needs a flower crown, so she sets herself at drawing it. 

She has just brandished the drawing into the air to present it to Godmother, and Godmother is _smiling_ back at her – a victory for Victoria! - when Cousin Thorn arrives.

* * *

Cousin Thorn is so tall he fills the doorway – not as tall as Father, and not as tall as she is on Father’s shoulders, but still tall enough.

He stopped right there on the doorstep, as if frozen, and now Godmother and him are staring at each other, without speaking. Even his shadow has stiffened, like Twit the kitten’s fur when it stands on end when it’s scared.

Mother clears her throat from somewhere behind Cousin Thorn. “Good evening, dear nephew” She can hear a smile in Mother’s words. She doesn’t understand why, and neither does Cousin Thorn, apparently. “If you could let me in my own parlor...”  
Cousin Thorn moves aside without looking away from Godmother and without answering Mother.

Mother comes over to pick her up and take her upstairs with her and Great-godmother, but Victoria is adamant about giving Godmother her flower crown first. Great-godmother is looking at Cousin Thorn like she wants to yell at him and say something nice at the same time.

As the Victoria in Mother’s arms goes upstairs, the Real her remains in the room. She concentrates hard to hear what they’ll say.

Cousin Thorn is sitting close to Godmother, a hand on her knee. Victoria is not sure she saw him move. “What is it? What can I do, love?” Victoria thinks Cousin Thorn sounds strange. She hears metallic snaps fluttering fast.

Godmother is looking at Victoria’s flower crown in a queer way, she lays the paper on a low table of shiny wood. She gives a big sigh and leans back with her head sinking in the cushion. “I think… you’ve done more than enough”.  
She looks at him with a strange smile. “In fact, I believe we’ve both defied expectations!” Godmother is laughing. Victoria is confused.

Cousin Thorn’s hand is moving away from Godmother’s knee, except that Godmother catches it in both of hers and lays it flush to her belly. Godmother’s smile is so sweet and pretty but Victoria feels like it could cut something, and that something might be Cousin Thorn.

His head snaps down and then up again to look at Godmother’s face, his hand jerks in place, his mouth drops open, but words don’t follow.  
Her hands move up to cup his face, thumbs smoothing over his cheeks. “It seems we’ll be meeting someone new in six months… Oh, I know you don’t appreciate socializing, but you’ll just have to deal with it this time.” Cousin Thorn is a statue, Victoria is not even sure he is breathing.

Godmother is blinking hard, stray tears slipping down her skin, but she smiles, tender and sweet. Victoria thinks she’s never seen her so beautiful. Her hands move to smooth back Cousin Thorn’s hair, his eyes are the only thing he is moving, wide as they are, all across Godmother’s face.

“I’m afraid you are already outnumbered. There are two of us now, flouting your precious statistics!”

Cousin Thorn makes a choked, wounded sounding noise as he folds all around Godmother.

With a start, Victoria scampers away and up the stairs and down the corridor and into Mother’s warm arms. She feels guilty enough about snooping without watching Cousin Thorn actually cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorn and Ophélie may be a bit ooc.  
> Honestly, though, from the glimpses we have when they're alone, I think they would get absolutely corny with each other without all that mess to fix.  
> They are too awkward not to be. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm letting them be sappy in my own head.
> 
> Bye!


	5. Meraviglia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorn is coming to terms with this... random accident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I've finally finished A Storm of Echoes and because of that I had to tweak a bit with this very chapter.  
> That means some spoilers are ahead.  
> We are back to Thorn for this one.
> 
> Chapter title means Astonishment

The bedroom is peaceful.

Peaceful, not _really_ quiet: there is the reassuring ticking of the clock, the rhytmic, unhurried sound of their breathing, the whisper of the blankets whenever their legs happen to brush them, the soft crinkle of a book page turned and the sweet, humming sighs his wife makes in answer to the damp pop of kisses he leaves on her shoulderblade, whenever the urge strikes him.

His restless mind, too, has slowed to a crawl, slipping into the blissful, mystical state he only manages to achieve when he is this close to Ophèlie.  
He doesn’t feels wrong in his hunlking and unwieldy body when she’s all curled up into him.  
He basks in their hard-won peace with a certain amount of satisfaction.

The dip between Ophelié’s neck and shoulder that he finds senselessly charming welcomes his forehead, while his wife’s back molds to his front. They are reclining - half sitting half laying - against the headboard, his knees caging his wife’s body and his arms crossing right above her belly.

Something – _someone_ – is growing in there.

_I won’t share your bed, I won’t give you children. I’m very sorry._

Thorn is extremely grateful Ophèlie proved herself wrong on several accounts, mainly loving him and sharing his bed. _Their_ bed. A petty and unimportant part of himself feels vindicated, he swiftly stomps it down.

As for the parental aspect of the matter, he is unsure how to feel.  
He doesn't think he's getting replaced, this time around.

Just like that, his thought process whirs back on and snaps into place like a coil.  
He cuddles Ophèlie closer still, his forehead digging into her, an exhalation peppering her skin in gooseflesh.

_You don’t want brats? Perfect, I detest them._

And thing is, he _does_ , as a rule. Would this child know? Would he hate his own child?  
He would be lying if he said he never thought of children of their own, all of them taking after _her_ , of course.  
Before she dashed the tentative, fledging hopes of being better than his own parents with the word equivalent of a deluge of crooked arrows burrowing into flash. Twice, even.  
She had been so very sad, eyes downcast behind her tinted glasses – dull gray, almost black, he recalls – when she explained that the inversion had made her barren. Thirty-two words. Twenty-three of them apologies. Unneeded.  
_Sorry. Sorry. Sorry._

She had cried so hard then and he’d felt so _useless_.

And now this new impossibility. It could not be, but it was. Typical Ophélie.

“Thorn, are you alright?” Her hand makes a deliberate journey to his hair and he tightens the grip his nerves have on his claws, leashing them ruthlessly because – so help him – if he accidentally hurts his wife and child he doesn’t know what he might do to himself.   
Are you? He wants to ask.   
“Are you sure?” is what actually passes through his lips.  
Not what he planned, but he still needs to know.   
Five metal fingers leave his hair in short succession, Ophelié is turning around to face him.  
She elbows him in the process.

His wife is regarding him bemusedly. Thorn thinks she has no business looking at him like that for voicing a reasonable concern.   
“Why not?” She blurts out, her eyes bright.  
“What?” he narrows his own, his scars twitch.  
“Why should we not have this baby?” her face colors “I mean… the whole time I was at the clinic, and then later- I kept going in circles...” he reaches out, taking her wrists in his much bigger hands, thumbs rubbing those same circles on skin. “I couln’t possibly be pregnant, I never saw myself as a mother and we were fine on our own… it wasn’t even...”  
“The first item on the agenda is not so impossible, apparently.” He interjects idly.  
She snorts, sending her dark curls in odd directions, but she nods “And just because I can’t see myself behaving like my mother or- or Berenilde do, it doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily be a _bad_ mother” He doesn’t tell her she couldn’t be a bad anything, he knows it wouldn’t be objective. “Plus, we _are_ happy by ourselves, I would even say we make an excellent team, don’t we?” 

He agrees, he even rewards her reasoning with a kiss, because twenty-three minutes is too long a time, in his opinion. He makes himself break away, he doesn’t know how he does it. “You were saying?”

She looks dazed – he is proud and pleased to note – and her face is so red it might glow. “ _I was saying_ ” she clears her throat and licks her lips “that teamwork might be a solid base for being decent parents.” He does not dispute this. “Besides! When have we ever played hookie with our problems?”  
She yanks her left hand out of his to rest in her lap and looks down “Not that you are a problem. You are not. You didn’t hear that.”  
He can feel his lips twitch. “I don’t think they have any ears yet.”

His wife is rolling her eyes at him, but she’s smiling. The special smile that makes him _want_ to be stupid, that says she’s happy and in love and wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else but next to him, the smile she waited almost three years – a thousand and nine days – to gift him. His very own miracle. It’s the very same one she wore the first time they- 

“What about you? I know you hate kids” his wife sounds nervous. That’s unacceptable.

“Maybe not this one.” 

This one is theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the chapter.  
> I'm going to update more slowly in the coming weeks, sorry.


	6. Domanda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria is trying to understand what's happening. Berenilde is trying to deflect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I hope everyone is being safe in this trying times.  
> I'm taking a couple of days off from uni and studying, so here we are.
> 
> Title means "Question" in Italian.

Berenilde helps her little girl dry off from her bath with a soft towel. She made sure to be close enough to the fireplace so Victoria’s little body is comfortably toasty in her cocoon, but far enough away from it, as well.

A log could crackle and spit sparkles at her daughter, she is not about to take any chances.

Her darling angel is growing day by day, ever surer of herself. Berenilde knows she shouldn’t be feeling melancholy, but she can’t exactly help it. Victoria’s siblings should be growing up alongside her and lead her on into mischief.

No use in thinking about that.

She blows a raspberry at the child and she giggles like the mad little thing that she is. No one is here to witness her silliness, Roseline is downstairs baking.

Some business about Anima women craving all sorts of baked goods when expecting and not wanting to leave her niece bereft.  
A bit premature, in Berenilde’s opinion, given how their niece is in the firm grasp of morning sickness.

“That babe will be born frowning like their father, I’m as sure as a hammer. On my word, they won’t be _sour_ as well, just because their mother didn’t have cake on hand.”

The nerve and impertinence of that woman - under her roof! - was unbelievable. Thorn may not ever be a _jolly_ or enjoyable fellow, but he is _much_ happier now than he’s ever been!  
Berenilde can’t help but resent Ophélie a little bit for that - irrational and petty as it may be - for managing to be what her nephew needed.

Maybe that is the reason for this bout of listlessness of hers: she remembers the child her nephew has been – lonely and trying to blend into the walls – and now about to be a father himself… Imagine that!

Berenilde can’t believe how sentimental she’s being, perhaps old age is catching up with her after all…

“Mama?” her darling Victoria is blinking wide eyes at her.  
Berenilde picks up a hairbrush and turns her baby girl around. “Yes, my dove?”

“Godmother and cousin are bringing the baby when they come see us?”

Ah.

Berenilde is a lady, she only lets a click of her tongue loose. She had hoped the bath would make her daughter too drowsy to ask _any_ questions.  
Her mother had been careless in wake of the happy news and Victoria had managed to evade her and remain downstairs with the couple. By the time she and Roseline had noticed there was no helping it, they could not very well impose on Thorn and Ophélie. Too.

Confusion arose in the girl, explanations were given, but Curiosity followed and was not easily satisfied.  
Berenilde is currently defenseless, with no Roseline to back her up.

“No, sweetling. You won’t be able to meet your baby cousin for some time yet, remember?”

A little head tilts back until precious little blue eyes are looking at her upside down. “You said Godmother has the baby” Her daughter is too cute by half, but Berenilde doesn’t want to have this conversation _alone_ with her. She shifts on the carpet. Go figure, she’s alone in her hour of need.

“Yes… but the baby is inside her tummy-” this raises a loud gasp, for some unfathomable reason “and they have to grow for some time before they can come out.”

She is an adult, she is a Dragon, she will not be afraid of her six year old asking about sex.

“But… poppy buttons, Mama! Why did godmother eat it?!” Victoria looks so disturbed, she can’t help but laugh. When her mother kisses her little nose, the little girl goes cross-eyed trying to keep looking at her. “She did not.”

Blow drying her hair gives Berenilde a short reprieve.

“So how did they get in her tummy, Mother?”

Ah. ‘Mother’ means she is very serious, she’s on a mission.

“Why don’t we go downstairs to see if madame Rosaline has something sweet for us, mh?”

\------

“Great-godmother, why is Godmother’s baby in her tummy?”

If anybody had told her six years ago that she - _The_ Lady Berenilde of the Dragon Clan - would one day be seated at a counter in her own kitchens with her daughter asking questions about the miracle of new life, surrounded by cooling biscuits, with a flour-speckled Animist fluttering about with oven mittens, Berenilde would have had that person lashed.  
But times _had_ changed: she now even _paid_ the help. Still, she would not complain, not when her lord Farouk was trying so very hard to make the Pole and the world a better place.

All in all it was not so bad.

“Popper Buttons!” Smothering a smile, for poor Roseline had narrowly saved her latest batch of confectioneries, the elder lady gently chides the youngest one. “Victoria, my dearest, don’t surprise poor madame Roseline like that: she might burn herself!”

Her daughter chirps an apology, Berenilde is so proud.

“Oh, blunt knives and chilled cutlery...” that particular pinch in Roseline’s face is reserved for one person and one person alone.

“Surprise!”

Victoria turns around too fast for her mother’s liking, launching herself at the figure darkening the doorway and shrieking with glee “Godfather! Godfather!”

Archibald, in all his scuffed and worn out mischievous glory, busted hat and handsome laugh lines winking for the world to see, picks up his god-daughter; after a satisfying amount of spinning, with Victoria hugging his neck tight and kissing all that she can reach, the ex-ambassador sketches a bow and sweeps his tophat. “Ladies! What a sight for sore eyes, I say! Did you miss me, my little love?”

After an earnest affirmative answer from his charge, he was treated to a fair amount of gushing he did not expect “Godfather! Godfather! Did you know godmother and cousin have a baby? But no one won’t tell me how!”

There is only dread to feel as Archie’s expression first freezes in disbelief, his eyes jumping rapidly to all of them in turn and then unfolding in a wicked smile, his whole person positively shining with delighted naughtiness.

“Is that so, poppet? Why don’t you ask your cousin, Monsieur Thorn? I can assure you _he knows_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Archie...  
> Was it really necessary?
> 
> Also... I have no idea how six year olds talk... 
> 
> I hope to post another chapter before or during the holidays but idk, this year is rough, as you all know.
> 
> ...Anyway! Thank you for taking the time, yet again, for reading my silly flight of fancy.
> 
> -Cinnamoncommas


	7. Risposta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorn and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> Thank you all for reading/commenting/leaving kudos on this nonsense.
> 
> So... surprise chapter!   
> It is also much longer than my standard.
> 
> I- I'm not really sure about this, I'll be honest. I don't think this conversation turned out well.  
> It IS cringe-y, though.
> 
> This chapter is multi-POV, the pov changes at every big break: We start with Thorn, then we have Victoria, a surprise, Victoria again, a surprise and the coda back with Thorn.

Children have always been a natural enemy for Thorn.

He is aware this constitutes a rather _prominent_ concern in his situation.

Two situations, he amends. The first being impending fatherhood in six months and twelve days – allegedly, one can never tell with his wife – and the second and most pressing _and unwanted_ predicament being his cousin in his Office.

Archibald, useless reprobate that he is, burst into his Treasury from the umbrella stand with the girl in tow and basically _dumped her on him_.

“Have mercy on poor Victoria, Monsieur Tresurer! I can’t drag my darling to this _business meeting_ , no place for a child, you see.” He had the gall to wink at him. Scruffy from the point of his mismatched shoes up, unkempt hair and repelling worn-through tophat, the rake was a picture of pretty much everything wrong in the world, in Thorn’s opinion.

He itched. And his Claws itched as well.

So Victoria had kissed Archibald goodbye - thrice: one for each cheek and one on the nose – and proceeded to impose herself on him.

She hadn’t tried to kiss _Thorn_ , at least, although she had clung onto him until he caved and hugged her back. For five seconds.

He wondered - for the hundred-third time - if he would feel as awkward with his own flesh and blood. He wonders again, a hundred and four.

“Cousin?”

Victoria has relocated to the floor with a puzzle. Why must the girl always sit or lay on the floor?

He pretends he didn’t hear her, keeps signing his documents and compiling his books. There is a dire need of order, his successor-predecessor left a disaster he’s only _now_ bringing to heel.

And he’ll have to take leave from work if... when-

“Cousin.”

Thorn swallows down the exasperated exhalation that begs to burst out of him.

Victoria is – on average – a nice enough child. Easy enough to share space with. Usually. As far as kids go.

He affixes the stamp of the Treasury at the bottom of the registration form and then, raising his head from his work, he gives the girl his temporarily undivided attention.  
She is pouting at him, her young face so similar to his aunt that it’s discomfiting.

As soon as their eyes meet he has a feeling of foreboding. Bad foreboding.

“Mama said there is a baby in Godmother’s tummy. But she didn’t eat it.”

“She didn’t.”

Suddenly he is hyper-aware of the heating he had to turn on, he feels a drop of sweat rolling down the back of his neck, like a snake. A poisonous snake. And he is trapped.

Thorn suddenly and anxiously longs for the comfort of his wife’s presence, like a tight bandage for an otherwise deadly wound.  
But his wife is tucked away in their home with her aunt and he is here in his office with this infantile hazard.

His life is always horrible in every way when Ophélie is not with him, never mind that he deserves it.

“How did it get in her tummy then?”

Thorn is certain Victoria’s parents should handle this matter.  
But then again, the thought of Farouk talking to Victoria about this is sobering.  
He’s not about to risk _that_.

However annoying the child is being, she doesn’t deserve that.  
That doesn’t mean _he_ is in any way equipped to deal with this.

* * *

“… All babies grow in their mother’s womb before they’re born.”

Victoria doesn’t know what ‘womb’ means. It’s another word for ‘tummy’, like ‘belly’, maybe. She’d rather be sure, though. Cousin Thorn always uses difficult words, because he’s a serious person.  
Victoria is not, she’s a child. “What’s a womb?” She eyes her cousin expectantly. His face doesn’t wince, but the rest of him does.

Her blue eyes follow him when he abruptly stands up from his desk, when he makes a limping beeline to a low cabinet and when he pours himself water from the pitcher set over it. Victoria wrinkles her nose, Cousin is ignoring her _again_.

But then she gets it: _**Cousin Thorn doesn’t know either**_. He didn’t really answer her, she reasons. Maybe he’s ashamed because he’s a grown up and he _should_ know it.  
“I’m sorry Cousin Thorn, it’s alright if you don’t know...” Victoria thinks the tip of the ear turned to her is a bit red, she feels bad and she hopes she looks as sorry as she feels.

Cousin is staring really hard at his glass, like it bit him. Maybe the water didn’t taste very good. “I _do know_ , Victoria.”

Well, _she_ thinks that tone doesn’t really help his case. It sounded like the time she bumped into a table, everything on it crushing to the floor, and when Mother had asked if she was running in the corridor she had lied and said ‘no’. She tells him so.

Cousin sighs for a very long time before turning around and fixing his unimpressed stare on her. Victoria stares back in the very same manner. Because she’s not impressed either.  
“You are very young and it’s difficult to find words suitable to explain to someone your age.”

That makes sense. She wonders why nobody else _simply_ told her that. She _is_ little. “Like ‘womb’?”

“Yes.” Cousin Thorn’s face looks like what she thinks her own face looks like when she has to go to the doctor. Maybe that’s why no one else wanted to tell her! Maybe babies come from a scary place and that’s why Godmother was so very strange the other day!

“A womb is an organ that females have inside their… tummies. Like a pauch.”

Duh, then. “Like the stomach.”

“Ophélie didn’t _eat_ the baby, Victoria.”

Victoria doesn’t like her Cousin when he gets snappy. She likes him better when he’s nice and explains things to her even if she’s not a grown up. She tells him.

Cousin Thorn looks down at his shoes and then comes over to her, and she has to crane her neck up up up, since she’s sitting on a pillow on the floor and he’s _tall_ tall. She thinks he’s sorry but he won’t tell. Cousin Thorn is strange like that, but she loves him anyway.

And then Cousin Thorn _sits down on the floor with her_. Victoria’s eyes grow wide because she has never seen Cousin Thorn sit on the floor, she doesn’t think he should with his hurt leg.

“Babies don’t get in there from above, but from below. Your mother is a woman, she can explain _that_ to you, at least.” He won’t tell her anymore than this.  
Victoria decides that’s all right, she can keep her investigation going.

She shuffles closer to Cousin Thorn and asks him to help with her puzzle.

* * *

Archibald feels naughty in his hiding place inside the umbrella stand. And by ‘naughty’ he means happily entertained by his favourite Treasurer’s misfortune.

Which he masterminded.

He couldn’t possibly pass this occasion up.

Archibald has a renewed appreciation for the joys of life since his own miraculous second lease of life. He’ll take his enjoyment where he can get it.

Monsieur Thorn, a father!

This preposterous notion ought to be celebrated in the most embarrassing fashion Archibald can manage, but that is a thought for another day.

He should feel guilty for potentially exposing Victoria to her cousin’s sour temper, however his darling, dearest Victoria has a natural talent in beast taming. He really ought to shower her with more presents and all of his devotion.

“Ophélie didn’t _eat_ the baby, Victoria.”

While Archibald was always happy to hear that level of frustration, he’s not at all keen that _Victoria_ should be subjected to it. He infers that Thorn deserves all the agony he must be feeling. 

He guffaws in his elbows. Eating a baby. That sounds equally disturbing and ridiculous and exactly what a child would come up with. It _is_ a logical conclusion for a young and innocent mind: how else would something get in there? _Indeed_

And Thorn… Thorn grappling with sex is already a funny picture. He pities his friend with a husband like that, never mind that the mad woman is actually, shockingly _happy_.  
Anyway: Thorn and sex. Ludicrous. Add explaining that to a six year old and only magic can follow in its wake.

“Actually… making a baby is rather like a puzzle.”

Oh, this ought to be good – Archibald thinks – this will be worth the ticket price.

* * *

Victoria stares very hard at her puzzle. It is still a set of wood pieces that will make a _picture_ , not a baby.  
Babies are tiny little people, they’re nothing like puzzles.  
She looks uncomprehendingly at her cousin from her perch in his lap.

“Not- It’s a _metaphor_.” His face looks sharper upside-down. Victoria’s sad her Cousin’s frown is so deep but his smile not very large. Not very smiley, in fact.

“Your mother calls you ‘dove’ even if you’re not.”

She does and she is not. Victoria never thought about it. ‘Metaphor’ is another smart word she’ll need to remember. She thinks it might be more useful than ‘womb’, anyway.

Victoria nods, to show Cousin Thorn she understood. He doesn’t seem to believe her.

“Two _adults_ that like each other make... _special_ puzzles, _alone_ together.” Cousin Thorn feels tense like a taut wire, he’s reaching over and making her puzzle – the real puzzle - by himself. Victoria figures it’s alright, she shifts a bit so she can hug her Cousin around the middle, since he’s so uncomfortable.  
She wonders what picture will come out. “And when a man and a woman have two pieces that fit together, it may lead to a baby growing. Piece after piece. In nine months.”  
Slot, slot, slot. It looks like some sort of paw.

Victoria maybe understands now: it’s like the moving Shadows she sees when Travelling, they are not a real person but they make up somebody.  
“In the womb?” She asks, to make sure.

“Yes.” It’s more of a hiss than a word. Victoria doesn’t think Cousin Thorn will want to speak again today. A ‘metaphor’: Cousin Thorn is a statue. He is all hard lines: his mouth, the corner of his eye, his jaw. He also has two deep wrinkles on his forehead, like two identical waves. “So… in the end, you and godmother put the baby in her tummy and it will come out once its puzzle is done.”

As she thought, Cousin Thorn used all his words for today, he just jerks his head, his lips thinning even more, as he slots the last piece of the real puzzle in its place.

It’s a dancing bear with a tophat.

She wants to thank him for being nice and patient – _mostly_ – and doing the not-a-metaphor-puzzle together, so she does what Father always does when she shows him something. Victoria pats Cousin Thorn on the thigh.

“That’s nice. Good job.”

* * *

Archibald feels like he’s going to die, wheezing in the dark not-space of an umbrella stand in the Treasury.  
A fun way to go, mortifying as it would be.  
He’d like to thank God for the first time in his life. This is amazing.  
If he could just see the poor sod’s face without risking his own head, he would come out of his hiding place.  
He just might.

* * *

This day and this _talk_ couldn’t possibly have gone _worse_ , Thorn is a hundred percent sure of it.  
It was all wrong, all of it.  
Why had he thought he could speak with Victoria about this?  
Why had _she_ thought it a smart idea to ask him?  
Right, this was supposed to be _practice_.  
Because he’s going to have irrational and inconvenient questions spewed at him sooner than he’d like, which is _never_.  
And he clearly and quite spectacularly _failed_.

He’s never going to purchase another puzzle in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I did this to you Thorn. 
> 
> Well, I hope it wasn't too awful...? I'm sorry, I'm the youngest in my family and I have only vague recollections about asking these questions...  
> Idk when the next update is gonna be, maybe next year. ahah.
> 
> Happy holidays and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it
> 
> -Cinnamoncommas


	8. Giostra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ophélie is home alone...   
> or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! 
> 
> Title means "Carousel"

It isn’t really the little’s girl fault, you can’t expect a child to keep a secret from what is - essentially - _family_. She heard news that are supposedly happy and _of course_ she spread it, so everyone that she loves could be happy together.

Victoria didn’t even know it was supposed to _be_ a secret 

No matter how many times Ophélie repeats this to herself, however, she can’t help but feel a bit of resentfulness.  
She knows she’s being unfair.  
The problem isn’t even that Victoria told _Archibald_ – though Thorn disagrees - it’s just that she didn’t want anyone else to know. For now. Just in case.

She and Thorn are still coming to terms with the news. Mostly happy, largely terrifying news.

Everything is spiraling out of her control, much too fast. It always happens with her at some point: just as soon as she thinks she’s got life figured out, the rug gets pulled from beneath her and she needs to find her balance again.  
And Ophélie doesn’t _balance_. 

She’s- _They’re_ trying to come to terms with this… surprise? Shock? Bombshell? Thing.

She wonders if she’s supposed to apologise to Thorn for disrupting their life once more, although she doesn’t remotely feel bad about it.

Not like she did on Babél when the subject of motherhood was breached.

She remembers finally admitting to herself how crushed she was, bawling and apologizing endlessly in Thorn’s arms.  
How the yarn of confusion, grief, stress, anger and _longing_ untangled, wrenched really, in that moment.  
She would have wanted the chance to have children with Thorn.

She has it now, and she wants to try, but…

She has no doubt he will be a good father but… will Thorn be _happy_ with this?

Ophélie feels like she’s being pulled in every direction at once and her stomach lurches. Although that might just be morning sickness. Afternoon- _Sometime_ sickness.

The ginger tea helps a bit, but she’s had some unpredictable days when nothing works and the nausea is so strong it goes to her head and everything goes blurry and unbearable.

She needs to pee every five minutes: not only is it uncomfortable, but it is also unexplainably humiliating. She is strange like that.

What makes her the most anxious, though, are moments like this, when she gets unsteady on her legs and her poor coordination fails her. It takes an herculean effort to simply tell right from left and up from down. Dread curdles her veins and locks her into place like lead. She fears she’s back in the Deviation Observatory, she fears she’s somewhere else and _nowhere_ -

She concentrates on breathing and slowly, _slowly_ , _slowly_ sliding down to her knees, wherever she is. She mustn’t fall down, she absolutely _can’t_.  
It’s three times too many today.

She presses a hand low on her belly, not that there is anything to feel there as of yet, but she’ll pretend their child can feel her anyway. “I know it must suck being in there, nothing is where it should be, right? Believe me, I know.”

The last week has been difficult: for all that she’s sure of wanting this baby, her body is not. It’s never been particularly gracious to accept changes and a pregnancy – an impossible and, dare she think it, miracle pregnancy – is a big fat change for a body like hers.  
She had her first appointment with a gynecologist and an obstetrician. The doctor said plainly that her situation is a high-risk one: she may very well lose their baby in the next month, or later, or the both of them may die. And he didn’t even touch on the birth.

She had a _tiny little hunch_ that might be the case, but Thorn had not appreciated that suggestion, regardless of the fact he must have known as well.

She is so very grateful her husband has been an unmovable pillar of support. Despite his professed willingness to embark on this impromptu journey with her, she knows he harbors doubts, sees the fleeting shadows in his eyes when they inevitably fall down.

“We’ll prove them all wrong, you just have to hold onto me and be patient with your father. He just worries. He worries a lot.”

She has this overwhelming need to shower Thorn with all the love he never received, the drive this baby has sparked is as compelling. Maybe she wants him to see how _he_ should have been loved. Ophélie just hopes it will be enough for him to love their baby as well, she has a faith in Thorn that defies and _has_ defied reality.

“He has this crease between his eyes that just seems-”

It is at this moment, Ophélie in a heap on the floor, sweat cooling on her neck and talking to the invisible little bump of cells growing into her womb, that Archibald chooses to emerge from a shortcut through one of their storage closets.

* * *

“I say, I always knew you would fall at my feet at some point, Madam Thorn.”

If he thought his saucy remark would win him anything more than a reflexive blush, he had another thing coming.  
Her disorientation had drained her, her legs were cramping and she was unimpressed. “Hello Archibald. Would you help me up, please?”

His ever present genial grin drops a fraction. “Oh, dear. Are you ill?”

\- _**Should I carry you like the dashing knight that I am?** _-  
Ophélie gives him the most deadpan look she can pull off in her state. She looks like a grumpy sparrow puffed up by its ruffled feathers, not that she knows.__

____

Archibald decides to actually make himself useful, but getting her up and moving is a snail-paced process, what with her legs being jelly and her feet tripping over the carpet, the air and her shadow. She is thankful for her friend’s steady grip and mindless chattering.

__

Once they are somewhat comfortably seated, he congratulates her again, although more warmly and genuinely without Thorn present. She doesn’t understand those two and their relationship.

__

“How could you tell Victoria to ask _Thorn_ about _those_ … matters?” Poor Thorn, she dares not imagine what thoughts went through his mind, for all his outward composure. She had put a grounding and supportive hand on his tense back while he related the whole fiasco to her. She would have liked to have been there with him to… help… or - rather- be embarrassed together.

__

She will have to worry about that someday, she realizes. If all goes as it should.

__

“It was too good an occasion to pass up, mon chèr. Besides ” he makes a show of popping candy into his mouth “He rallied a rather suitable explanation for my darling’s precious ears. Puzzles, of all things! I had to concede defeat.”

__

Of course he is utterly unrepentant, grinning like sin. “How gracious of you.”

__

They talk for a bit longer, she grows wearier. “You should move to Berenilde’s for the time being, if the risk is great.” Archibald says, uncharacteristically serious.

__

She should, but her independent nature chafes at the suggestion. Thorn and Ophélie have made theirs this little corner of the world, she doesn’t want to share their space and privacy.  
She doesn’t want to go back clinging to Berenilde and Aunt Roseline. She may not have the choice if she wants to pull this off: her aunt has already threatened to come to live with them for the time being. Thorn wouldn’t abide by it with grace. Nor would she, truth be told.

__

“You’re just hoping to gain another god-daughter, don’t you?”

__

His innocent smile – _fake_ – is answer enough.

__

“I _am_ hoping it’s a girl!”

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and commenting and leaving kudos, it's much appreciated.
> 
> Unfortunately, I'm sick, so I'm slowing down a bit with my writing.
> 
> Please wear a mask, wash your hands and be careful.


	9. Emicrania

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ophélie feels stifled by all this well-meaning concern.
> 
> And then things go south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see! I hope everyone is alright and safe and wearing masks.  
> I've had some trouble but I'm getting back on track, I hope.
> 
> Chapter title means 'Migraine'
> 
> cw: sickness, discomfort and trouble in pregnancy

It gets better, than worse, than better again.

The world has never been a louder place, it seems to Ophélie

.

Even when the world becomes little more than a household full of love and attention she has been trying to bear with ever-vanishing grace. She feels stifled.

Ophélie is positive her child agrees with her, going by the way they make their displeasure known with suspiciously timely attacks of headaches, dizzy spells, hot and cold flashes.

Every time their father’s hovering – and Thorn is _constantly_ hovering these days – she gets one: one of her toes meets the ground for the arduous journey to the toilet? He’s there to make sure she doesn’t trip; she’s reaching for a book in the library? He _teleports_ from the desk he’s seated at to stand directly at her back and ask her which book she wanted. “What do you want me to do?”, “Is there something you need?”, “What can I get you?”

How can the man move that fast?

Ophélie is both touched and exasperated, but what she usually gets is a splitting pain between her eyebrows. That only makes him redouble his efforts, nevermind that she tries to explain that _they’re fine and it’s nothing_. She’s ashamed of being so ungrateful, but he’s driving her to insanity and not in the _nice_ way she _wishes_ he would.

Not that she would have the energy for _that_.

At least their child understands her.

Thorn, overdramatic creature that he is, has gone and appointed several assistants in a well-oiled machine he can rule over from Berenilde’s library, where he entrenches himself whenever he’s not shadowing her. For an hysteric, horrific moment she thinks he’s back to being Sir Henry the automaton.  
She dislikes that thought.

Ophélie wishes he wouldn’t do that. Nothing was after them now, after all.

When it’s not Thorn looming over her, then it’s either Berenilde trapping her under a plethora of blankets or aunt Roseline fussing with pillows.  
And reminding her she needs to put on more weight. Because she’s still nauseous and not eating enough and she’s not _craving food_ like she supposedly should. _She knows, thank you_.

She wishes everyone would just _tone it down and let them breathe_.

Her unexpected solace takes the form of the house’s smallest resident: her god-daughter.  
Victoria is the only one behaving normally and not treating her like a shepherd dog would an unruly sheep. She asks questions, she draws and reads and plays with her and Ophélie _sees_ how it might actually be wonderful having a child of her own.  
She needs the practice and, besides, Victoria is an easy child to love and spend time with. Also, she doesn’t cut her little _travels_ short, which makes her god-daughter love her very well, indeed.

“You have two shadows, godmother.” A little head inclines and a river of snow-white hair flows to the side, Victoria’s eyes narrow “Sometimes one shivers.”

Ophélie’s not really sure what to make of it. She’s _very carefully_ not thinking about _things_ best left in the past they belong to.

She finds a distraction from that stream of thoughts in the furrowed brows and steely eyes of her husband, bent over one of his mighty folders. She idly wonders how that expression might look on a child. Ophélie doesn’t really care whether the baby will be blond like a Dragon, a ginger Animist or an odd brunette, but she’ll be a disappointed mother if they won’t scowl like Thorn.  
He must feel her gaze, for he raises his head, quizzical.  
She only shrugs, hugs Victoria to her and smiles back at him in answer. Ah, yes: the thing Ophélie likes best about that frown is how she can make it disappear.

* * *

It all comes to a head on an unassuming Wednesday.  
Who expects trouble on a Wednesday?

She doesn’t really know what made her snap and turn over to her husband but, as she’s poking her index finger in his chest and proceeding to wave it up into his face - barely his chin, really, _but still_ –, she feels a rush of… something - _danger, fear, away_ – not really clear and not wholly _hers_.

Ophélie’s in the middle of her tirade when she stammers and falters, something viscous is sliding down her nose and she’s tilting and slumping into Thorn.

She doesn’t feel him catch her, she’s already passed out.

* * *

When she comes to, she’s laying down in a darkened bedroom and is the very obvious subject of a whispered conversation.  
Ophélie doesn’t really have the energy to bother with that at the moment, she makes herself sink deeper into the bedding and… _relax_. Not an easy feat when everything is aching.

A theory has taken root inside her head, despite it being – _well_... 

There is a shift at her side and, from the tension she feels on her skin, she knows what face her husband is making or _not_ making, really – before she even turns her head.

It’s like every line, crease and scar that makes up his beloved face is a dent in the stone. He makes an aborted move to take her hand and it plunges an unpleasant weight in her stomach how it just stops and hovers, unsure.

She will bridge that gap anytime.  
The tension bleeds out from his frame, though his eyes are still sharp with the same recrimination he wears in front of the mirror. Ophélie hates that look on Thorn. She hates it even more, this time, because she put it there. She weakly squeezes his hand, tries to apologize however she can. 

The whispers have stopped, but she has more important matters to attend to.  
She clings to her husband’s hand and tugs and scoots over until he’s awkwardly sitting on the bed with her.  
They get comfortable, even if that might not be entirely appropriate in company.  
_Who cares _? Not Ophélie.__

____

Someone clears their throat.

____

Firmly ensconced in Thorn’s side, Ophélie finally peeks at the other occupants of the room: Berenilde and aunt Roseline are a given, the doctor – doctor Xavier, not the gynecologist Thorn had glared very sharp daggers at – and the midwife surprise her slightly. She shouldn’t be, she supposes.

____

She hides half of her face in Thorn’s welcoming chest and his wide hand closes over her shoulder, thumb sweeping back and forth on the fabric of her sleeve.

____

Ophélie has been through some awful, dangerous, embarrassing and unpleasant circumstances in the last six-ish years of her life, but she’s unexplainably feeling like a guilty, naughty child-

____

_The child_!

____

“Are they-?”

____

She aches a bit, but – surely, _surely_ \- she’d feel pain down there if-?

____

“It’s alright dearie, just a bad scare.” the midwife has a soothing enough voice, but most of all, she doesn’t attempt to come any closer and doesn’t call her _’darling’_.  
Ophélie sighs in relief. “You’re in need of a good rest, though.”

____

“Archibald took five shortcuts to get them here.” Thorn’s voice is carefully neutral, she knows better. “They examined you as soon as they got here, I was here with you the whole time.”  
Ophélie is so glad she married him.  
She takes his free hand in both of hers and he tightens his grip. “You’ve been unconscious for an hour, fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.”  
He’s so dispassionate, her poor Thorn. As soon as they’re alone she’s going to kiss him all over his grumpy face as an apology. Twice over.

____

Doctor Xavier coughs once, she refocuses on him. “Madame, pregnancy is a stressful event in normal conditions… in your _particular_ case it’s imperative that you rest and avoid any kind of _unnecessary stress_. Perhaps bed rest sh-”

____

“That would drive me up the walls, even more than I already am.”

____

Berenilde has no right to look at her in such a chastising way, not with how insufferable she was with her moods while expecting Victoria.  
Aunt Roseline’s prattling agitation she can take.

____

Thorn is always in her corner, she knows, they just have to find common ground. Together.

____

“Uhm… doctor, I was wondering… does the baby have a nervous system yet?”

____

Thorn’s incredulous and _judging_ stare is digging into the side of her face – how can you not know it says, we have books on this it says – and the doctor blinks at her once.  
Ophélie is only carrying this baby, she is not a doctor nor an obsessive father-to-be, she refuses to know _everything_ about it: she has enough inside information, otherwise she _will ask_ , as she’s doing _now_. The midwife comes to her aid. “Yes sweetie, they do, but it’s still developing, of course, and it will for a while.”

____

Her theory doesn’t sound so far fetched, then.

____

“ _If_ the baby was a dragon could they feel threatened when I’m… _stressed_ … and react accordingly?”

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be nice to me, it's 1.30 am and I had a rough day.
> 
> Shhhhh, it doesn't have to make sense.
> 
> \- cinnamoncommas

**Author's Note:**

> "can you imagine if Ophélie defied the laws of nature once more and actually had a child, Thorn would be absolutely aghast at her for murdering statistics again. And then the horror and awe bc the child defies it as well. He has two of them, help him, it doesn't make any sense."  
> This was the reasoning that sparked all this. I have no excuses, I just wanted Dad Thorn and to laugh at him. I don't know how it evolved into this.
> 
> For the record: this is just for fun, I know they said several times they don't want any children and I'm sure they would be happy regardless.


End file.
